Sweet Baby Inc. Infected Reflector Entertainment Admits Unknown 9: Awakening Was A "Failure"
Reflector Entertainment, the developer of Unknown 9: Awakening admitted its entire transmedia project centered around the video game is a “failure.”
In a post to LinkedIn, CEO Herve Hoerdt of Reflector Entertainment announced the company would be laying off employees due to the game’s failure and that the company would not be working on a future project that was in a concept phase.
Hoerdt wrote, “Today, I informed our teams that I made the decision to not greenlight further work on a future project that was in conceptualization phase and thus terminating this development line.”
“Continuing this project would not have been sustainable for the future of the studio,” he added. “Regrettably, this also means that there will be redundancies following this decision.”
Next, he admitted Unknown 9: Awakening’s failure, “This decision correlates directly with the failure of the studio’s ambitious and courageous first project, a new IP with a rich transmedia universe. The performance of the release didn’t come near the company expectations, after numerous timeline adjustments and investments, both financially and other, and didn’t warrant any further exploration in this universe.”
From there, he detailed that current staff that is not getting laid off will be assigned to an existing Bandai Namco IP
This new announcement comes after the company began mass laying off employees back in November.
In a now-deleted blog post, Reflector Entertainment General Manager Marc-André Séguin, announced the company was “reducing our team by approximately 18% of Reflector’s total workforce.”
As for why the layoffs were happening, Séguin stated, “Today’s announcement isn’t driven by commercial success or external pressures, but stems instead from our current reality, which is that at this time, we cannot guarantee tangible work for all of the talented individuals we employ.”
He added, “With the recent release of Unknown 9: Awakening and our two key production lines entering the early stages of development, we must make sure that our staff is laser-focused on contributing to the projects that wholly benefit from their skillsets.”
Later in the post, Séguin said, “This shift will allow us to take the necessary time to refine our processes and perfect our upcoming projects so that we can deliver experiences that are both meaningful and memorable for players.”
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Unknown 9: Awakening only hit an all-time peak concurrent player count of 285 when it released in the middle of October.
The poor player counts came in the wake of the game being openly boycotted by numerous gamers after it was revealed that Reflector not only employed Sweet Baby Inc. co-founder David Bedard, but it had contracted with the company’s CEO Kim Belair to be a story architect.
Bedard and Belair’s involvement were confirmed by The Shorty Awards that listed their credits on the entire branded project for Unknown 9.
What do you make of this admission that the game and the transmedia project was a failure?
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Great news
18% is nowhere near enough. They'll have to lay off 70% if they only have a single Bandai Namco property and no other projects.